Chaos Conquers North Korea

I had really wanted to publish  a Q&A with Professor Andrei Lankov this morning, but since Yahoo’s e-mail service has gone from bad to worse, it’s simply not possible for me to even open up my e-mail to pull up his responses.  So spread the word:  Yahoo! mail stinks. 

Meanwhile, there’s a wave of fresh evidence, most of it via the Daily NK, to support Lankov’s thesis that North Korea can’t control the spread of chaos  or the erosion of its economy and society.  Now, those trends appear to be accelerating.

Earlier this year, we read about severe floods that are said  to have flooded 15-20% of North Korea’s cropland and caused massive damage and loss of life.  The floods affected a belt of land approximately South of the red line on this map (click for full size).  Note that because the farm land in that part of North Korea is its most productive, the actual crop losses are probably much more than 15-20%.   

The floods may also be having  a spillover effect in other regions of the country, particularly the barren  Northeast, which has always depended on other areas for its food supplies.  The Daily NK, in the context of a story on the spread of child  sexual exploitation in the North, also reports that  the food situation in the northeastern regions is worsening.  You will recall that the transporation system and  food supplies in those areas  were already tenuous before the floods, that the electrical supply has been disrupted by possible sabotage, and that several outbreaks of disease have been reported there in recent years. 

In North Hamkyung province, the civilians are lacking three crucial necessities: rice, water and electricity.  “Due to the paralysis of transportation methods in North Hamkyung, they are not even able to receive the minimum supply for flood victims. Other regions are able to receive the partial amount of the supply for flood victims given by the South, but North Hamkyung is suffering the most out of all provinces.

This report seems to indicate (seems, because it’s not that well translated)  that authorities in Chongjin have tried to reassert control over food supplies and supply rations to some of the more vulnerable people — which is obviously a good thing — but at the expense of market-traded food supplies that fed a lot more people.  On top of it all,  Sinuiju has lost its water and power supplies, meaning that every part of North Korea is now undergoing some kind of disaster. 

There has been a continuance of water shortage in Shinuiju since July.  The newsletter stated that, “There has not been a single drop of water in the entire city of Shinuiju. Only after September 9 were the civilians able to receive some tap water, but the tap water supply only runs from 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. for one hour.

“The people in Shinuiju are not able to go to sleep because they are waiting to receive the water. The electricity is provided for five hours each day, but due to the low electric pressure, they are not even able to use the water pump.    

Finally, this report  claims that students in North Korea’s technical college have also lost their rations; at the time of the report, many hadn’t eaten for 10 days.  Even North Korea’s public education system, which had been one of its rare successes, is dissolving as hungry kids skip school.

This is the strongest collection of evidence of a reemerging food crisis since the end of the Great Famine.  This time, we could actually prevent the next one — even in the “closed” counties (see map) where international food distribution was never previously allowed. 

If Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard are right about the regime’s dire economic condition  — and no one knows more about the North Korean economy than they do —  an offer by the international community to create an independent network to distribute food to the people would be an offer Kim Jong Il couldn’t refuse.  And since that’s been an elemental part of how humanitarian relief has been conducted everywhere on earth in recent decades, it doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable demand.  It might be the closest North Korea will ever get to a “soft” landing.

Just imagine the nightmare that reconstructing this broken  country will be.  There will be a tremendous temptation to invite the Chinese in to help, which will naturally translate to overpowering Chinese influence on the far northern regions, possibly even “occupation zones.”  If we’re to prevent that, we need to be prepared to fly humanitarian relief supplies into the North, although I emphatically believe that all of the armed forces that protect them should be South Korean.

One of the reasons why I support non-permissive engagement with the North Korean people — broadcasting; smuggling in newspapers, leaflets, books, VHS tapes, radios, cell phones; building connections between organized exile groups and discontented North Koreans — is that the system is changing, for better or for worse.  Unquestionably, post-revolutionary North Korea will be a chaotic place with hideous social problems.  To some degree, we can mitigate that chaos and shape a better future for Korea by building the foundations of a civil society now.  The way we could begin to do that is to begin explaining ideas like pluralism, democracy, economic freedom, and tolerance to its people now.

See also:

*   It looks like Comrade Chung is moving toward capturing the leftist UNDP’s nomination for president.  At this rate, he’ll be nominated just after Lee Myung-Bak’s inauguration, which would suit me fine.

*   Did North Korea just admit to having a uranium program … again?  I’d like to see whether they’ll show us the centrifuges.